


Never-Ending Circle

by Kissed_by_Circe



Series: Midnight Diner AU [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Halloween, Sirens, Starklings (ASoIaF), Were-Creatures, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2020-11-26 02:24:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20922614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kissed_by_Circe/pseuds/Kissed_by_Circe
Summary: The Starks’ first Halloween as a family of six, and their children’s first Halloween away from home 💀🎃🕷️





	Never-Ending Circle

**Author's Note:**

> A little one-shot for Halloween! The second part is set ~18 years after the first one, when all four children of Jon and Sansa Stark are living away from home 😊 also they may have found new friends and new squads, but they're of course still members of their original packs/squads/covens

⚡

**_31_ ** ** _st_ ** ** _ October_ ** ** _, evening _ **

“They’re just too adorable,” one of Dany’s friends’ sighs. Sansa doesn’t know which one, as the whole squad is crowding around the pram, a cloud of perfume and feathers and cooing sounds. No one’s crying yet, and they’ll leave once Dany manages to pry herself away from her grandnieces. They are sitting on the counter, Willow in a princess dress whose cool, purple colour matches the brilliant shade of her eyes, while Jenny wears a fur jumpsuit. They’re talking to their grandaunt with a serious expression, and Sansa guesses that she’s probably promising the girls more costumes for the next year. Willow doesn’t love her godmother, she _worships_ her, and she hopes that Dany will become some kind of mentor for her daughter.

Neither she nor Jon know much about sirens apart from the basics, and her aunt-in-law has been helping them with Willow since she was born. It’s easier with Jenny, because she’s so much like Jon, and they know many werewolf mothers that are more than ready to share stories and tricks with them. She thinks that it’ll be easiest for her with the twins, because they’re already showing the first signs of witchcraft, at only nine months old. The first thing her mother did when she visited them in the maternity ward, after she had the twins, was pointing to her with a smile, before she signed _‘just like you, when you were born’_.

The bell over the door rings, and Edd enters, with a broad smile and enough candy bags for everyone. “It’s almost closing time!” he tells them, the sirens say goodbye – Dany’s goodbye takes the longest, because she has to hug the girls several times, before she can follow her friends outside to the cab that’ll take them to some club or a party, probably both – and he helps the girls hop of the counter after hugging them. Sansa counts the cash register, makes sure that everything’s ready for the day after tomorrow, and slips out of her lab coat.

Jon will be here soon – they’ve agreed to go together with the whole pack and some other friends, with more than 15 children, and they’ll need all the help they can get to handle children, toddlers, and prams, but he wanted to place a bowl with candy on their porch for the neighbourhood children, and Edd’s already here, so she doesn’t mind waiting for her husband. Celia and Lucas are sleeping in their pram, and Jenny’s godfather is already busy showing the girls how to howl like a wolf.

It’s funny how the only one of their children with the werewolf gene is Jenny, but it’s nothing they talk about, at least not yet. They’ll wait a few more years, until the girls are older, though she supposes that it won’t change much. Jenny is barely a year older than Willow, and they’re as thick as thieves, as close as she expects the twins to be, once they’re older, and not even the fact that they’re different kinds of nightwalkers keeps them apart.

Jon arrives, and is greeted with lots of cheers of the girls, and a kiss from her. He takes Celia and Lucas out of the pram when they wake up, and rocks them gently on his shoulders, his expression so soft and full of love, and Willow and Jenny whisper with Edd who’s nodding along seriously. Outside the doors of the pharmacy leaves swirl lazily in the wind, and there’s a shade of magic and a hue of darkness in the way they dance. It’s the witching season, and she can’t wait to take her children out there.

💀

** _1_ ** ** _ st _ ** ** _ November_ ** ** _, early morning _ **

**_(a few years later)_ **

There’s something in the air this night, something spicy and crisp and _magical_, and she can’t help but breathe in deeply to try and absorb it all. Fall is her favourite season by far – spring is nice, summer is filled with life and long nights full of laughter, winter is cosy with snow fights and hot chocolate and open fireplaces, but fall is _more_, it’s the richly deep scent of earth, it’s the flaming shades of the trees and the beginning of new things like school years and college semesters and jobs, it’s the way everyone is busy and preparing for the darker days of winter, it’s the fresh cold after damp summer days, and magic is everywhere.

It’s no wonder that they celebrate Halloween when fall is at its peak, so very shortly before November turns the last throes of an old-women’s summer into the first signs of winter. It’s also when magic is at its peak, she thinks to herself when she steps out of the car and into the mist of the early morning, wrapping her fringed shawl tighter around herself. It’s too cold for her velvet robe, and she’s glad that they’ve taken the car to the conciliation stone out in the woods.

It’s their first Halloween away from home, their first time living in a big city without their parents, and she feels a bit lost sometimes, not sure if she’s doing the right thing or not. If it weren’t for Luke and his never-ending optimism, and Jenny and Willow and their sisterly advice, and the coven they’ve joined last month she’d be hiding in her bedroom, or had already run back home with shame burning in her face, but tonight she feels different, stronger, more confident.

_Like a witch. _

Her fingers are coated in gold, there’s a fine dusting of bone powder clinging to the long skirt of her robe-like velvet dress, rune tattoos curling around her forearms and neck and gemstones in her hair. There’s magic pulsing through her veins and drumming in her ears and throbbing under her skin now, a steady flow of warmth and _power_, and she thinks that this is what her mother must’ve felt like when she ended the red war more than three decades ago, a dozen years before Luke and she were born.

It’s been nothing more than a small gathering of witches and warlocks and enchantresses and a selected few friends who are nightwalkers themselves or at least know enough to keep calm and not make a fuss, a clearing in the woods two hours from here with an old conciliation stone from the sixteenth century, and a ritual under the full moon to sharpen their minds and their weapons, but it feels like everything’s changed now.

The way the other members of the coven looked at her, how Shiera, their leader, nodded at her after the ritual, how Robyn, who has the cutest dimples she’s ever seen, grinned at her – she felt seen and reassured and safe, the way mother’s looks make her feel. She’s starting to like this new town, this new circle, this new life, and she can’t wait for her Stark and Cerwyn cousins to come and visit.

🎃

She’s not facing the doors of the diner – mother has told them often enough to never look directly at the doors, and she listens to everything her mother and her father and the rest of her family says, _they know what they’re doing_, after all – but she notices them arriving nevertheless. Maybe it’s her senses, still heightened from her transformation earlier, maybe it’s the way Will perks up in the seat next to her, the feathers in her hair bristling and her eyes too dark, too deep, her pupils blown wider than they should be, maybe it’s the way the shadows change outside the windows when the car stops, she doesn’t know for sure.

Will is still high and giddy on adrenaline and something more, something darker, and she almost jumps onto the table when she sees them, a broad smile showing sharp teeth behind dark lipstick, yelling ‘the Starks are back together!’ and clapping her hands like a child, her graceful movements forgotten, the mask she wore to some party downtown falling out of her lap. She remembers her of their aunt Dany, the slinky dress and daring neckline, the perfectly coiffed hair, the leather jacket and combat boots that match her dress. She loves her, her sister, her best friend. They’re two halves of the same coin, mother always says, the sun and the moon, and she’s right. They wouldn’t be complete without each other, just like the twins couldn’t be apart from each other.

Luke looks just like he always does, soft eyes and soft hands and soft blues, the shy but charming nursing student that looks like their uncle Robb minus the scarring, but Celia strides in with new confidence, the worry on her face replaced with something else, wearing her witching robes like she was born in them. Maybe she was – she’s taken to spells and hexes so very easily, an even better student than her twin brother, and clinging to uncle Brynden’s and grandmother’s legs since she’s started walking. _A born warrior_, grandmother wrote on her arm with her fingertip once, and now she can see why.

The waitress appears before them, her gaze sweeping over seemingly drunk Will and the tattoos on Celia’s neck before it settles on Luke’s crooked smile. They all must look crazy to her, Will in her Halloween costume and she with her dirty hair and the twins in their witch outfits with gemstones in their hair and gold leaves on their fingers, and she makes sure to ask them all how their parties were, just to make sure.

Halloween falling on a full moon doesn’t happen often, but now she’s grateful for it, even if they couldn’t go to a party together or throw one in their apartment. The twins had to use the opportunity to do some magic ritual – and spend time with their new coven, to try and make friends with some other witches down here – and she spent the whole night as a wolf, out in the woods, because the pack she has down here didn’t want to go to the park, with all the partygoers and such running around.

“I can’t believe you’re not getting tired,” Luke murmurs, softly as always, and takes Will’s face in his hands, examining her, and the waitress glowers at Will while Celia sighs behind her menu. “She’s a siren, bro, and she’s probably high right now.” “It’s called afterglow, and it happens when you have fun, _nerd_,” she giggles, and Luke wipes his hands on his jeans. “I don’t even want to know where your face has been tonight.” “Okay, let’s not talk about _that_, guys,” Jenny interferes, and ignores Will’s giggles, Luke’s embarrassed blush and Celia drinking out of her coffee mug, partially because she’s too worn to find their jokes funny, partially because the door opens behind her, letting a gust of cold wind and a few leaves in and making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

Her breath catches in her throat when she turns, twenty-two years of being the older sister making her feel responsible for her younger siblings’ safety, and the first thing she thinks when she locks eyes with the stranger standing in the open door is _‘damn’_, followed by _‘I should’ve borrowed Will’s brush earlier’. _He’s not just handsome, he’s _perfect_, even if he looks a bit fucked up with his torn clothes and dirty face, and she looks down in her lap and tries to discreetly comb her fingers through her hair, clumps of dried mud falling out of the wild blonde strands, while he asks where the bathroom is with a deep, raspy voice that sends another shiver down her spine.

“I’d tap that _so_ hard,” Will whisper-yells next to her, and she silences her with a hiss. “Werebear?” Celia asks, still hiding behind the menu, but alert as always, and Jenny nods, without sticking her nose in the air to sniff because that would be embarrassing. “I still have some tonic…” Luke pulls out a beer bottle, and her fingers itch to grab it and walk over to where the stranger’s standing at the counter now, looking like he might collapse from exhaustion every moment while the waitress is still ogling Luke, but she’s not the kind of girl that does things like this, that’s Will. Even if the stranger is incredibly cute and totally her type.

Willow’s expression sobers, as much as it can given her state and how the silvery rays of the moon still linger on the tables, and she takes the bottle from their brother. “If you don’t go over there and talk to that cute guy, _I_ will.” Jenny knows what that’d mean, she’s seen it often enough, whenever her sister decided to go up to attractive people. Two sides of the same coin, made from the same material. _Maybe she’s that kind of girl after all_, she thinks, and grabs the bottle. It’s cool in her hand, and she tries to smile when she walks over to the cute werebear. She leans against the counter right next to him, not sexy like Will, but cool like Jenny, the bottle resting against her leg, and nods to the menu above it.

“Um, hey. Do you need a recommendation on the food?”

🕷️


End file.
